the way the clouds striped through the sky

Modern June Cleaver, no?

We've been busy with birthday parties over here, one last night for my mom, as she turned 60 (and holding, as she likes to say) and one for our boys, because their birthdays are just two weeks apart. I've got some great photos for sharing here another day. Tonight I'm just too exhausted for the uploading.

In the past I handled the stress of having company, lots of company, and trying so hard to keep everything impossibly perfect, by drinking. Sometimes I'd drink sneakily, and sometimes I'd drink right after the sober company left, to cope with my insecurity and need to people please.

Without that option, I'm learning not only new ways of coping, but to accept and relax. To expect less of myself and simply live the moments, believing it's all good enough simply because my intentions are good, even if there's nothing close to perfect.

I cleaned, but not frantically. I asked for help and I took my time. I saw a friend and held her four-day-old baby for a very, very long and therapeutic amount of time when I could have been attending to party details. I really did, as they say, take one moment at a time. No fret, no fuss.

I believed my mom's gift was good enough, without trying to read her face for clues. I believe she loved it.

Today, for the boys' party, I wore my pink summer sweater with a belt that ties around the waist. The belt is always riding up too high, creating a grandmother-looking waistline. I forgot about it for most of the day today. I didn't care about my silly belt.

Our boys had cake and ice cream and they got to see almost all of their favorite people in the whole universe at one time. They had a water fight and they wrestled with Uncle K and giggled out the best kinds of sounds with their cousins.

And then later, when we were outside, with the party winding down, the clouds started rolling in. I had been taking photos of Asher with Uncle K and of cousins in trees like monkeys, and I looked up and I had to think of how big and vast the shockingly beautiful sky is. How it's like life, so full and changing and engulfing, and how we can miss the brilliance of the bigger picture if we're paying too much attention to the stressful details.

The bigger picture is a million tiny reasons not to drink. So I am the best kind of exhausted, and beyond grateful to have noticed the sky.

P.S. Asher has continued to say "I not have mine headache anymore, Mommy." That's my current favorite sentence, just so you know. Thank you, all of you, for your thoughts and prayers. Go team.

Oh. And I forgot. These are the last days to vote for BlogLuxe Awards (nominee button in sidebar). Please vote for Violence UnSilenced in the Most Inspiring category and for any other blog you'd like in the other categories, obviously. Thank you!

Lives

We sat at the parade and my friend said, "Yes, you've lived a lot of lives." And I answered, with a lump in my throat, "Oh yes, I have."

~~~~~

I grew up in a town where the 4th of July is a really big deal. If it falls on a weekend, it's an especially long party complete with red and white and blue and a whole lot of people, and even more alcohol consumption than on the average summer weekend in Midwestern Minnesota.

It took me until the 3rd to realize that this year would be different. In the years before marriage and children, I would go to the parade, hang out on the lake, and drink, and then go to the bar and drink some more. After meeting Ryan and having our kiddos, I would spend the day with my family and then always be sure to have plans with friends, to socialize and drink, and then drink some more and more, out by the lake, seeing people I hadn't seen in a long time.

This was my first sober 4th of July long weekend. It was harder than I thought it would be because I've been coasting along the last month or so, not feeling so heavily weighted by my addiction. And then it just snuck up and waved memory flags, leaving me grieving in a way. I was watching my two worlds collide. The new against the old, crashing around and pulling on me, begging me to let go and to hold on. It's really hard to do both of those things at the same time.

Everything is still the same while I am not. And as grateful as I am for how I've changed, the sameness of everything else around me stings sometimes. I find myself missing the way I used to take part in some things, not only because I'm an alcoholic and therefore I wish I could drink like the average social drinker and can't, but because it's as if I'm learning a whole new culture with its own unique language and customs. I'm walking on new legs with shoes that don't quite fit yet. It's not even so much about the drinking, it's about the painful healing.

Time will help all of this, but for right now, it hurts. I know that as I take these steps on this new terrain, I'll grow and I'll heal more and more and that's so good. I think maybe I'm just afraid of the healing, of what I'll have to walk through as the memories crash. Because there is so much work to be done, I know that. I know because of the way I feel, actually really feel, when I feel time-warped. I'm a mess in it because the feelings are strong and I know they're telling me to keep walking, keep pushing through, keep feeling, keep grieving what I've done and what's been done to me. When it hurts, I'm stepping closer to being free of all of it, and sometimes I wonder if that's even possible, even while I know because of the last five and a half months, that anything is possible.

It's scary. My past holds dark places, and it is what it is while I am not, and while I am.

I am the girl who chain-smoked and listened and talked and listened and talked with good friends, gripping the glass and lifting the glass over and over while believing this was the way to go deeper into meaningful conversation, loosening us up. Like that was the only way to round the edges and let down the guard and say it like it is. I am the girl that would say, We have our best talks when we go out, the emptying bottles nearby.

I am the girl who drove anyway.

I am the girl who tolerated the advances and with each drink swallowed her voice, the one that begged to say no.

And as I grew out of that, while still drinking, I was the girl who made grown up choices and lived a grown up life while drinking faster and more in a way that would keep people from knowing.

If I was living the 4th of July one year ago, I would have made plans to be at the bar on the beach and I would have drank before I got there so that drinking so very much would not seem quite as much to my friends. And I would have had a moment or two of fuzzy and light and carefree and then the night would be spent chasing that buzz and never finding it. I would be the girl, standing there, trying to listen while obsessing about what to drink next or how much was left in my glass or if I had enough money in my pocket for just the right fix.

I was that girl, I am that girl, but I am not that girl.

I am not that. I am this.

I carry her, though, for right now. All of her stories are a part of me and it's impossible not to cry while I walk through this. I will let go of her, finding more freedom every day. But closing the door on yourself and starting again is not only a new chapter, it's like starting to write an entirely new story without any idea how to type or spell or think at all. And I'm trying to do it while life spins quickly on around me in its sameness and its newness. There is so much tension in the transition, the building of the plot with strange new characters, including me. Some days there's just too much tension and I'm beyond grateful that I have a place to go, to sit and say it and be heard, going deeper in conversation than alcohol could ever take me.

You know, the thing is, I want to keep her. She knows what she knows because of living her story. And so I think what I need to do is hold on to her while finding me. She has a lot to teach me. I hope she continues to talk, to sneak up on me and remind me of all she's seen and known. And I hope that when she does, it won't always feel this way, so raw.

I believe that it won't, and so I'll keep walking, until I've worn these shoes to comfort.

P.S. In this new life, the one that clashes with the old, I am their mother. So most of the time, I choose to live in the moment, with them, because this life of mine is really really good.

need

I need willpower. I'm hungry and thirsty and looking for a place to sleep. I know what I need. I can rise up in the morning and tell myself, today I will do the right things, and then I believe I will reap the rewards of self-discipline and self-control. My intentions are so good that I believe I'll do it all (and more) and then maybe I'll feel more peaceful.

As if everything works like checks and balances and tit for tat and punishment and reward.

Do 'A' - Get 'B'

I need to believe in grace because I can't believe A gets B because so often I get a really good B without finishing my A, without following through or doing my good-intended right thing. Grace isn't fair in the best possible way. Grace does not fit in a box, but it remains in all things even though it blows my mind like galaxies do.

I need creativity. I'm hungry and thirsty and looking for a place to sleep. And so I tell myself I will write from my heart-gut and I will read the words of artists and scour the etsy for beauty. I turn up the sound on music that settles my heart and then I believe I'll feel peaceful.

Most of the time, I'm interrupted, unable to do what I set out to do, unable to focus. And somehow, the beauty is always rising up all around, inside and outside the deafening noise and blinding light of home life with small boys. It's in them and on them and in me and beyond us, like galaxies.

When people say "Higher Power" that's what I think. I think of something beyond and in and on and above and below and never needing food or water or rest but always needing to redeem broken things and to love.

I need God. I'm hungry and thirsty and looking for a place to sleep. I try to hear his voice and see truth. But most of the time, my mind and heart don't match. My mind runs and settles down my heart, covering it with the lies of man-made Christian systems that steal the grace and joy that a God-Man brings, twisting it up to fit a box.

I need acceptance. The knowledge that I'm still good when my willpower fails me again. The acceptance of myself, just as I am, right now. The acceptance of life on its own terms, that whatever life is doing, it is not out to get me, because of the under and in and on and beyond.

I need to be accepting in the same way I must accept and forgive myself.
I need to forgive the systems and the people who tell the lies because they cannot help what they do in their fear and confusion that leads them to unacceptance. They need too, and then they grasp.
~~~~~
For so long, I got up day after day, trying to ignore the reality that by late afternoon I would inevitably throw in the towel and reach for wine, hoping it would fill the need, every need. I was hungry and thirsty and needed a place to sleep. And always, always, there was still that spark in me, holding on and hoping for me, being the grace that's under and in and around and beyond.

When I stopped drinking, I did not stop being hungry and thirsty or needing a place to sleep. But when I stopped, I uncovered the always-gasping-in-me spark, to see that beauty was still there, in a mercy flicker that never snuffed because the in and on and beyond never stops.

I can't stop being hungry or thirsty or needing a place to sleep. I need.

I need to stop fighting that I need.

Help, I will say, and then the flicker will reach up, find air, and spread so I can pass it on.

I will be grateful to need because we all do and fire is contagious and I want to give it to you and to her and to him and to them. To help in any small way that I can.

And then I'll feel peaceful.

P.S. I wrote something in response to a "talk" I heard last night that got me a bit riled up. SO. What I wrote is a response to that and it's titled, "The truth is, most Christians think alcoholism is a choice." Check it out if you'd like. Thank you.

More

I read something last night. It was written by a woman who struggled with alcoholism like I do and it said that when she drank to enjoy it, she couldn't control her drinking, and when she tried to control her drinking, to drink less, she didn't enjoy it at all. Seems kind of obvious that this would be the case for an alcoholic, but it takes most of us a really long time to recognize this reality.

I thought about all the times in my life that I could, for one reason or another, only have a couple of drinks at a time. Maybe it was in the presence of non-drinking people, or we were about to go to a movie, or any number of things. And I realized how true it was, that I would get so uncomfortable with only a couple of drinks. I didn't see the point in that at all, ever. If I was going to drink, I was going to DRINK, you know?

And when I had the freedom to drink in a way that brought me what I thought was enjoyment, it meant that I could not, would not, be able to control the amount. If I tried, I was frustrated and miserable. My head would stay in only one place, thinking more more more I want more now I want more. I'd be so unaware of whatever experience I was having because my head would stay with alcohol.

After years of my brain taking this particular route of thinking, I'm realizing I have to be patient with myself...it's going to take a long time to re-train my brain. When I see a woman sitting on a porch, reading a book, what flashes through my head is that her experience would be better somehow with a glass of wine...or seven.

It's frustrating to have those thoughts, while never having even two drinks.

The pleasure center in my head still beckons to light up. It stomps its feet and fidgets. It just doesn't know what to do. It wants something to look forward to, something to consume with no control. It wants.

As I continued to read this alcoholic woman's story, I saw myself more and more, even though many times I wonder if I'm really even an alcoholic at all. (That's another thing the alcoholic mind does all on it's own, cunning and baffling.) When she said that she was always a caretaker, always striving to be perfect and even being seen as perfect by everyone around her, I understood. And it hit me in the gut when she said that the first time she got drunk with a group of other drinkers, she finally felt like she fit in, like no one expected her to be perfect anymore. She felt flawed and rebellious and totally accepted.

Me too.

And to be honest, the only time I've felt that way again is at a meeting with people just like me. There is no place like it on this planet. None. There is a circle of complete and total understanding, a passion for grace in the eyes around the room, and power in transparency. It is redemption and I am just me, flawed and rebellious and accepted. Like no where else. It is much better than the acceptance I found when drinking in bars and over bottles of wine with friends.

It is authentic and pure and good. My sick alcoholic thoughts make perfect sense to the people with nodding heads around the room. Grace takes on human form in those rooms, embodied in my fellows and leaping down my throat. It wraps itself around my insecurities and sets me free.

I think this is how it's supposed to be, and I wish it were this way everywhere. But then, I suppose the experience would become too common and lose its holiness.

As a believer in a God who supplies that grace in our struggle, I am starting to see that this is how heaven will be. We will not sit on clouds, bored, playing a harp for all of eternity. No, we will sit in circles and feel free, never pretending, already perfect with our pleasure centers always lighting up in a constant glow of true joy.

Too much? Lofty? Unbelievable? Idealistic? Insane?

I think not. Because I've tasted it here and I am made to want more because there is more.

The BlogHer '10 Serenity Suite

(Grandma, I'm about to make no sense to you. So please don't feel bad if you don't get what I'm talking about. I love you!)
~~~~~

"Now this is a story all about how my life got flipped, turned upside-down, now I'd like to take a minute, just sit right there, and I'll tell you how I became The Prince...."

Oh wait...I love that song, but it's just (sadly) not my story...

Actually, this is a story all about how The Serenity Suite at BlogHer '10 came to be. It's actually more exciting than "shootin' some b-ball outside of the school..."

Maggie and I were talking about BlogHer '10 on the phone one night right after we quit drinking, "when a couple of guys who were up to no good, started makin' trouble in my neighborhood...."
Or wait....okay, um...we started talking about how Maggie is speaking at the conference this year and then I was being a selfish friend and refusing to support her by showing up because I was scared of the booze at BlogHer. I was all, I don't knoooow, it sounds so stressful...all the booze around... (whine whine fuss fuss)

I said something about how I might consider going if I knew there were meetings for we recovering addicts on hand, or something like that, a safe place to go and hide, basically. And then Maggie said that she and Stef had just been talking about that, brainstorming ideas on how to make people in recovery (or anyone who may need a reprieve) more comfortable in an often overstimulating conference environment.

Long story short, I ended up emailing Lori at BlogHer. And I'm writing this today to say thank you to her and her team for supporting this idea so earnestly. I'm not kidding when I say that it took Lori less than five minutes to respond to my initial request for a safe haven for people struggling with anxiety, sobriety, etc. while at the conference. She was on it, immediately, and has brought our vision to a reality. Thank you, Lori!

So, Maggie, Lori and I put our heads together and had the idea to have a suite available throughout the conference, a low-key environment with the purpose of allowing anyone, not just we recovering addicts, a reprieve from the beautiful mayhem that is the BlogHer conference.

So today, with a hugely grateful heart, I introduce, The Serentiy Suite. (click for all the details)

If you're going to BlogHer, please make a note of Room 4307 and stop by to take a break while chillin' with these inspiring bloggers:

• Maggie of Okay,Fine,Dammit and Violence Unsilenced
• Cecily K of Uppercase Woman
• Casey of Moosh in Indy
• Jenny, The Bloggess
• Ellie of One Crafty Mother
• Corinne of Trains, Tutus, and Tea Time
• Jessica of BernThis
• Lisa of Smacksy
• Anna of Adbpbt
• Anissa Mayhew of Free Anissa and Aiming Low
• Cyn of The Nap Warden and NW Designs
• Ann from Ann's Rants
• Karen from Worn Off Novelties
• Stacey from Is There Any Mommy Out There?
• Samantha from Temporarily Me
• Joanne from Pundit Mom
• and more, to be announced
  

(Not all of these fantastic people will be there all at once, mind you, but on a rotating in and out sort of basis.) (So when you stop in, it'll be kind of like pin the tail on the donkey, seeing who's there when you open your eyes. Or maybe kind of like roulette. Or like spinning that wheel on The Price is Right. Or something.)

(Suite (and sweet) buttons for your site will be available later on today-hopefully. If you're going to BlogHer, you can spread the word about the suite by letting people know you're planning to visit it while you're there...you'll be letting them know with a button. On your site. That's what I meant by that...but you knew that. You can find it right here on this post, later, or on the BlogHer community page. The button, that is. But you knew that. Bye.)

P.S. Please come. I promise not to sing The Fresh Prince of Bel Air theme song if you do.

spontaneous dichotomies

The roads are the kind that dip and swirl, pulling your stomach with them. My iPod was on shuffle and the songs matched this experience and I knew that was grace.

I was keenly aware of grace.

I listened to an entire audiobook about grace on my seven hour drive, and I thought, it's everywhere I look. I can see it. This is what I mean by extraordinary.

It was in the stacked green trees on the hills and on the cows in the fields, and my heart started revving up when I looked at the GPS and saw I was only a mile away. I knew I was about to see one of my life's most treasured grace faces, smiling at me in a deeply rooted recognition of soul. I'm not making it up when I say that the sun peeked through the clouds right in that moment, and then disappeared for the rest of the weekend.

There is nothing, nothing, like sharing a sobriety date with someone. And that it all happened through blogging? Well, we sure blog-met for a reason. Many reasons.

So when I stepped out of the car after a spontaneous decision to drive to Maggie's house when she said, "you should come over," it was surreal. It was good, maybe even a little taste of perfection. I'm starting to see that the best things in life really are experienced when you simply follow your heart-gut and do unplanned and slightly neurotic things.

I mean, 14 hours in the car in 2 days? Out of the blue. Who does that?

Me.

And I'm so glad.

Maggie's home is a refuge, a true shelter of peace. Her family is precious. My short time there, totally worth the hours in the car with a sore bum and a far too frequently full bladder. Road trips are such a mix of frustration and grace, like a condensed version of the whole of life's dichotomies. I think I love me some road trips.

Maggie and I are closing in on 5 months of sobriety. We talked about it, of course, but we also talked about a hundred other things. We are becoming more of what we were always meant to be, together. And no one understands exactly as Maggie does what I'm feeling about all of that at any given time. It's indescribable and much like my road trip. As I think about that, I realize that we both quit drinking in much the same way I decided to go on this trip. Suddenly, unexpectedly, with a mix of the fear of the unknown and the excitement of hope.

Maggie fully understands my discomfort, the ache of sitting in the same position too long, while she recognizes the grace of freedom like the wind through the open windows that she sees in my face.

I'm just so grateful.

Also. I slept in the book room. Which means that the reading of all the book titles on the shelves stole a whole bunch of my sleep. It was totally radical.

Also. The icing on my visit cake? Surprising Becky and Ann. Let's just say there was a lot of hugging and squealing and then more hugging.

Thank you, Maggie. I love you and your family and your guacamole.

And then, I love coming home, to the place where my boys interrupt my thoughts as I write this, like their children's music sporadically interrupted my ipod shuffle on the trip. These interruptions can be annoying at the same time they are the most delicious tastes of grace, breaking in and bringing my focus back to my three greatest loves.

Releasing

It's been nearly five months since we moved. Five months. This has been the very most surreal five months of my life, I'm pretty sure. I stopped drinking not long after we came here so everything was literally and figuratively new for me, for us.

Today, when Ryan finished building a fence for our backyard, I thought about it all, again. The fence means that our boys can run in and out without so much worry and checking. And it also meant so many other analogous things, and I really liked that it also means that our dog can finally be free of this...

In our previous fenced backyard, our Tia Maria dog had free reign within the parameters of the fence. She was just fine with that. It was as if she knew the fence was there to protect her, to keep her home. Every once and a while she would get out, one of us forgetting the gate, and within minutes of sniffing around the neighbor's yard, she would end up sitting right back in her usual spot on the back steps. The gate would stand open wide for the freeing right next to her and yet every time, she was content to stay in the place she knew best, as if she understood she'd get lost if she left.

And then we moved and we had no fence and so we used the chain and she hated it and we hated it. And so today with the new fence and freedom from chains, I thought about the night I quit drinking, how it had to do with that chain. I thought about how I was too drunk to get it off of her and it was so snowy and slippery and I was bent down trying to release the clasp to let her in and couldn't get up from my knees. It was different than it had been before, I had maintained without being unable to get up before and so I knew I had to quit. I knew I had hit the spiral that alcoholics hit, the one that takes us to insanity. I didn't want to be the stumbly lady in the dark, drinking alone. I quit with that picture of me from that night in my mind.

I hope I never forget it.

Because the night of the chain is the night I was loosed.


Today I thought, We still need a fence, boundaries for safety, but the chain is gone.

When Ryan finished the fence (and practically threw a party for himself, just so you know), he ran for his favorite dog in the whole wide world, the girl he's been so diligently taking for a run every night because she's been so cooped up. He unhooked her chain and he said, GO!

She just stood there. Confused.

You're free, Tia, RUN!

She'd been loosed.

She just didn't know what to do.

Of course, I understood.

She walked over to a place she's been able to reach for nearly five months, ignoring all the new places to adventure, and lay down, close to what she knew, what had become familiar.


And I got it, right then. It made perfect sense to me why new sobriety is so uncomfortable.
It's a releasing from the chain and a new fence in a new home. And so I wondered if Tia was staying still because she was scared or if she didn't quite trust herself yet.

Or maybe she was still because she was just fine, for a little while, not expecting too much, just taking it all in.

We prodded and whistled and said with our high-pitched doggy-talk voices,
C'mon Tia, let's GO!
And she continued to sit still.

Until an idea hit us
and so we went with her
and when she saw us go ahead of her
running with freedom
she hopped up
and she sniffed and she explored
trailing behind a little carefully


She went as far as she could go, safely,
and she finally looked glad to be home.

The chains are gone and this is slow and I am not alone.

The way home

I am on a flight where you choose your own seat and this is new to me. At the same time that this empowers me, it also makes me feel like the unpopular kid in the lunch room, searching frantically for one of the last spaces and a welcoming face. Much like the last four and a half months of sobriety, I think, because I always think in analogies. I can't help it.

I spot the middle seat in the exit row and ask the Aisle Man if it's taken. He kindly says it's yours and I slide in and stretch my legs and start to realize he's been drinking. He makes jokes that aren't funny, loudly, trying to entertain the whole plane. Some people chuckle softly, a courtesy laugh. Others shift uncomfortably in their seats, trying to ignore his volume and obvious drunkenness.

He orders a drink and then another on a flight that's not two hours. I read David Sedaris and somehow I feel at ease. I feel comfortable with him, a kindred spirit even though I'm on this side of our addiction. I understand him and I forgive his clumsy words and actions and talk with him about Minneapolis. I am on my way home and I'm sober and it's surreal and good and different. And I think, when we're together we are not okay while we're okay, we are on different pages in the same book. And then I pray there is speed-reading involved in his story, even though I'm not ahead of him while I'm on this different page.

~~~~~~~

I get off the plane and I walk with this man until we say goodbye. Then I wait to claim my overstuffed bag. We're early, maybe the wind hurried our flight. So I lug said bag over the edge of the carousel and I go and stand outside while it starts to drizzle and I wait. I'm feet away from a bench and so I hear her when she slurs. She's talking to me and to everyone and no one and I don't know what her words are, but I know she's drunk. She can't sit up straight, her body sways from her intoxication and she rolls her eyes and waves away a woman who approaches her. The woman is her sister and she's anxious and embarrassed. She gives me an apologetic shrug of the shoulders and I touch her arm and tell her I understand, that I'm recovering, slowly. Her eyes light up and she says me too and she grabs my hand and tells me it's always so comforting to meet a fellow friend of Bill W.

She needed that right then and I did too and it was no coincidence at all that we stood there together just two people making an army.

With her garbled words, my new bench friend tells me she will be taken to Hazelden. She flew here to go to treatment. She laughs, like it's the best joke of her life and then the corners of her mouth shiver in fear. She is doing an excellent job of having one last hurrah before treatment, and my heart hurts for her and with hers and next to her soldier sister. I want to tell her that things are about to get better. I want to tell her that she's on her way to something good. I want to fix it. But I know she won't remember and so I just stand close by and I wait and I silently pray that she makes it, that her sister makes it. I really want them to make it.

And I pray and want the same thing for me, because we who are not on the same page but living the same story, we are different while always the same.

Then my ride pulls up to the curb and I don't want to leave while I want to leave.

That's how it feels, in this book, my addiction story, their addiction story. We are always both saints and sinners while we get better or we don't.

Whatever the page, there is always growth in the pain, while we wait for our rides home.

Everywhere

I am currently eating a bagel just as fast as I can.

Dear Digestive System,
please don't be mad, I'm in a hurry.
Love,
Overwhelmed

I leave for Utah in just 2 days. There I will be attending the Casual Blogger Conference and also doing a little speaking. Today I am kidless and working hard at preparing for the speaking and whitening my teeth. Because, you know, people might think my teeth are yellow while I'm waxing philosophical about blogging in front of them. Or something.

I've printed out my itinerary and the conference agenda and tickets for this and tickets for that and apparently this is really happening.

I shall now sit back and tell myself (burp) that everything is going to be just fine.

Yesterday I went to get loads of groceries in an effort to continue my job as wife and mother while I'm away. I was starting to feel the stress of traveling and public speaking and all of that, and for a while I sat in the grocery store parking lot, staring at its liquor store. I wasn't going to go in. I've made promises to myself and to my family and friends that I want to keep. But boy oh boy did I ever want white wine. Which makes no sense because I hardly ever drank white wine in my past alcoholic life. But it was so hot out and my stress level was rising and I had that dream about drinking white wine and it was so real. The dewy glass and the cold flow of bitter-sweet rushing to my veins. So real. And I wanted that dream to be real. Even though I know that if that dream were real, it would make me (and many others) very sad.

So I got out of my car and got fruit and meat and cheese instead. And while I stood in the checkout, I watched the little screen beeping through my items, adding up my purchases, and I wondered why there needed to be advertisements on the other half of the screen. This wine is on sale and that wine is on sale, and I will never taste it again.

It's everywhere. In books I read, people meeting up for margaritas. On TV, the way the lies are told, that drinking this or that form of booze will make you happy and maybe even thin. We all know that isn't true. I mean, I lost ten freaking pounds in a matter of days when I quit consuming an ungodly amount of wine. And my teeth are whiter now, too. For the record. Perhaps I don't need to whiten them before the conference after all....

Anywho. Like I said, it's everywhere, and I am everywhere, so I'm thinking I should just get used to it. Or start picketing or something. But not now, I need to go to Utah. In 2 days.

(Now is probably a good time to get prepared for my "presentations.")

What I'll think about while I work hard today is not wine, I will think about the lovely people I'm going to get to see and hear and laugh with. And I will know that I'm going to remember it all and be present and aware for it all, my veins filled with nothing but the blood pumping through them...and possibly, a whole lot of sugar.

Wish me well, friends! Even if you don't, I have a feeling this is going to be good. Even if the haircut I got the other day makes my head look like a very large mushroom.

I'm a fan

I'm a big fan of owls.

The other day, my friend gave me a big fat owl to sit outside my front door. He greets people.
(He's not a real live owl, he's a decorative one.) I would have taken a picture of him to show you, but it's pouring outside right now, so he's busy. I don't know what I mean by that.

Owls can turn their heads all the way around, isn't that mind blowing?
They're like mothers.

I'm also a big fan of garage sales. Yesterday we found an area rug that's just perfect for our family room. It has orange and gray in it, and so do our family and dining rooms. So it matches.

But my socks don't.
I'm not a fan of matching clothing.

Ryan is not a fan of germs and so he's a bit concerned that something horrible is lurking in this garage sale rug. He just told the boys, "First I'm going to vacuum it and then I'm going to steam clean it, and then I'm going to spray it with disinfectant and then I'm going to take it out to dinner."

I'm a fan of Ryan's humor.

I am 35 years old today, which looks really weird to me on the computer screen. I feel 25-ish and act 18-ish and maybe it's time to decide to fully grow up. I'll give that some more thought. Later.

Right now I'm just trying to be a fan of 35.

I had my first "using dream" last night. That's what we addicts call a dream in which you are drinking or using drugs even though you're sober in real life.

I am not a fan of using dreams.

In my dream, Ryan was just as forgiving as he is in real life.

You guessed it, I'm a fan.

He got me a Netbook for my birthday. Seriously. I love it. It's tiny and doesn't weigh very much at all and it can turn it's head all the way around.

Wait. I somehow went back to the beginning.

Oh well, that's what you have to do sometimes.
I'm a fan of do-overs.


{Last night I totally forgot to wrap up the giveaway for Life After Yes until it was past my bedtime. So I consulted random.org and then waited to tell you right now that Mainly a Midwife is the winner! Congrats, lady! Email me and stuff.}

P.S. I'm a big fan....

Miles and Asher~Miles' preschool graduation
May 20, 2010

(Samsung did not have anything to do with this post at all. I just told you what I got for my birthday and in doing so I generously gifted Samsung with free advertising. I hope it's their birthday.)


One last thing...I'm a fan:

Untwisting

You know that rumbly sound of slurping the last of your drink through a straw?

I can't decide if I love or hate that sound.

Maybe I should decide to like it because it's a satisfying sound of finishing, being sure to get every last drop of something tasty. And maybe I should hate it because it's a belchy kind of irritating satisfying sound.

I feel this way about sobriety. Some days I'm absolutely in love with its satisfaction, and other days (ahem, yesterday) I hate the itchy irritation of it. When I was drinking I was trying to take the edge off. What I'm learning is that it wasn't working, not at all. My edges are more rounded now than when I was pouring glass after glass night after night. I'm softer and lighter and different.

The thing is, sober or not, alcoholic or not, life is covered in itchy irritation. So when I'm hating sobriety, it isn't even really sobriety that I'm hating. And therein lies the beauty of remaining alcohol-free. It's just right. It fits, even if a bit tightly at first.

And I see it as a gift. Because I don't know how to answer you when you ask, "but what if I feel like you were feeling and I'm not an alcoholic?"

"What if your journey and your struggle resonate with me and I don't drink? How do I change?"

I've gotten so many emails like that, and I just don't know what to tell you. I really wish I did. Sometimes it feels really selfish to be wading through my issues, taking so much time away, an hour at a time, many days, to work on me, to stay sober. But I have to. I have no choice. So in a way, I wish every one of you, especially the mothers who write to me, could be given that. Time away to remain victorious over it, whatever your it may be.

Here, leave the house, sit and talk and just be. Do it or you will self-destruct. Here are some tools, use them. Here is a list of numbers, dial them when you feel lost or lonely.

I wish every woman, every mother, could be given that permission. To go and seek and learn what it is that makes her tick or keeps her all tied up in her own head. To heal and cry and grow, rounding her edges. To maybe take a good look at her hard truths, the ones we all have, the things that we need to give up, to rid our lives of so that we can breathe. Selfishness, over-eating, booze, vicodin, yelling and screaming, too much TV or Internet time, whatever! Usually we are upset and twisted up inside because we have no time to be honest with ourselves about what needs to go. Resentments? Anger? Habitual lying? Self-deprecation or hatred? Guilt?

You know what it is for you. Maybe only you know. If you could stand in front of the mirror, staring straight into those eyes of yours, refusing to look away until the truth has set you free, you would see that you know. And as painful as whatever that truth can be, looking at it is the only option on a road to freedom.

It will make that slurpy and belchy sound and panic will rise in your chest, but you will start to untwist. And you will look around and say, Oh God, what do I do now and then you will tell someone who loves you dearly and you will say I have to do something about this. And sometimes that means getting help, so you will ask someone to help you get help and then you will do it. Because realizing you are powerless over whatever you are carrying and pushing and pulling and wearing, it just becomes what you have to do, once you stop running from it.

I am sitting in a coffee shop with all the windows open and a breeze is blowing over my sandaled feet and I'm wondering, who am I to say these things? What do I know?

But I wanted to answer your questions, while I hear the slurping sounds of finished drinks from tables around me. I wanted to tell you that I'm sorry I can't give you steps to overcoming the way you feel, you who is maybe not an alcoholic but you who still wants to know what's wrong with you.

Friend, those people, other mothers or just any person, who seem so happy and content? Maybe they aren't. Maybe they're just like you and like me. And if they are truly peaceful, even serene? I'm guessing they gave something up. Because if we're telling any kind of good story at all with our lives, we've sacrificed something to win something better, you know? Every good story (as it says in A Million Miles in a Thousand Years) is about wanting something and overcoming a great obstacle to get it.

Not every obstacle is a bold addiction. But maybe it's more of a way of thinking or living or dealing, a way that just doesn't sit right in your heart of hearts. What we're all seeking so much of the time (aside from spiritual things) is balance. Every mother, every person, knows that balance is at times completely impossible because life just won't allow for it. But I want to tell you that I am closer to it than I have ever come and only because I took something out of my life that would make balance impossible, leaving me reeling and twisted.

I'm still twisted up a whole lot of the time, but not in such a shackled way. New days abound in which I start again and feel renewed. When I was drinking, there was no such thing as true renewal.

I am four months sober today, and that's all I know.

(And I hope I don't sound like a big bossy know-it-all jerk. I promise I'm not one in real life.)

That's courage

"I didn't want to get well, because if I got well, nobody would come and save me anymore. And I didn't want to get well, because while I could not control my happiness, I could control my misery, and I would rather have had control than live in the tension of what if." -Donald Miller in A Million Miles in a Thousand Years
(This post is brought to you by the fact that I finished this book last night and my mind is reeling with good thoughts to think. Thank you (again), Donald Miller.)

_______________

We need breath-taking stories in our lives. We're made for these stories, and too often we don't choose them. We don't write the book or apply for the job or propose or adopt that child or take that trip or dance because we're scared. And then we stay just where we are and wonder why life is boring and we just simply rev our engines and a whole lot of the time that makes us quit trying at everything. We lose faith and we lose courage because we're so easily bored.

Entertain me, something! Please keep me interested, someone!

There is so much trying involved in both reaching for epic stories, and in finding contentment in the mundane and ordinary things. We need both, and satisfaction in having a balanced life of both takes courage. To live both ends of the spectrum with a fierce determination, who does that? To believe either your epic or your ordinary are exactly where you should be? To trust your conscience and your heart-gut to lead you to either the peaks or valleys or the quiet in-between, to simply keep going inside of both? If a person can do that, strive to do that, they have courage.

Happiness in trials, in joys, and in the mundane. Courage.

For me, when life is spinning its days of repetitive sameness with nothing much happening, I have a harder time continuing to choose to do the right thing, every single day. There's no catalyst, and so I stall and go numb and quit caring, quit trying as hard.

When we do that, we often create drama, even subconsciously, providing our own catalysts, building up an inauthentic plot until we've made a huge mess. Or we get depressed or try to fill ourselves up with the wrong things until we are addicted to those wrong things.

What am I trying to say? I'm rambling my way to my own thoughts again. Here's what I'm saying is the balance: Contentment when there's no catalyst for change, allowing the change to be slow while setting up the pins and knocking them down, day after day. And then saying yes when life is asking for a bigger commitment or adventure that you know is right for you. The ability to listen to yourself in both the times of bigger things that bring fast change, and the quieter times of repetitive sameness, this is what we seek, I think. Being content either way, because both the big and small are inevitable. This is balance. This is courage. Continuing to move forward, to do the right thing, either way. Exciting or not. New or not. Mundane or not.

Isn't this what makes sobriety, motherhood, employment and marriage so very hard? We embark on these adventures believing we've found it, whatever new excitement we've been looking for. We celebrate with feasts and toasts and we truly feel and believe. We're living a grand story. But then we find out how much everyday in and out work is involved in these beautiful big things and sometimes we just don't want to keep going, we want to back up to the joy or even feel the sorrow of loss so that we can have that feeling of starting again, or being rescued. Unless, of course, we're choosing courage. The courage of contentment.

The really exciting and dramatic times are good, even if they're painful for a time. They shape us. But right now I think that the most excitement and joy ends up happening in the ordinary, but only if we're choosing to live our every day stories out loud, no matter how boring they may be perceived by the world. We are the ones that will feel the fulfillment and awe even within what may seem like a cookie-cutter existence, if we live from our heart-guts, obey our God-given instincts in both the big and small things, and just keep going.

That's courage.

And I want it.

_______________

"The experience is so slow you could easily come to believe life isn't that big of a deal, that life isn't staggering. What I'm saying is I think life is staggering and we're just used to it. We all are like spoiled children no longer impressed with the gifts we're given--it's just another sunset, just another rainstorm moving in over the mountain, just another child being born, just another funeral....If I have hope, it's that God sat over the dark nothing and wrote you and me, specifically, into the story, and put us in with the sunset and the rainstorm as though to say, Enjoy your place in my story. The beauty of it means you matter, and you can create within it even as I have created you. -Donald Miller


This post is a part of Five for Ten at Momalom. Click on the button below to check out this beautiful community of women, telling our stories together on topics important to us all, and join in if you'd like.

My accent thanks you from Minnahsohtah

UPDATE: I fixed it-it's full length now!
Color me proud. Except now I'm not that proud because
WOW, wait until you get to the end and I do a random and disturbing impression.
Seriously. WHAT is wrong with me?

I really can't believe I did this. I'm so not a vlogger.
You can tell by the horrible lighting and all the fidgeting.
I must really love you.
Here goes...nothin'...

Thank you from Heather King on Vimeo.

I know. I know. That thing at the end. I don't know...
And what? You callin' me a sappy sapperton?
Well...yeah.
Word.


The Maggie I speak of is Maggie Dammit, of course. Just sayin'.

And the post I speak of is here, at Missy's place.


The End.

On motherhood and addiction: My whole story

A fellow Minnesota blogger, Missy the Marketing Mama, is doing a health and wellness series on her blog with all kinds of information on varying topics. Today's topic is motherhood and addiction, and when Missy asked me to share my story, I was happy to do it and I'll tell you why in a sec.

If you've wondered at all about what my drinking was like (as in, the details) and what happened to get me to stop, I'm over at Missy's place today sharing the specifics of my story.

Please know that I agreed to do this because I think Missy is doing an amazing thing with this educational series, not because I want you to sit riveted in front of my sad addiction story. Actually, I don't. I hesitated before saying yes for that very reason. I don't want this to be about me. I wanted to do this because it's my truth and the truth can help other women like me. Also, Missy has asked some professionals from the amazing Hazelden Treatment Center to answer any questions her readers might have about addiction, and I think that rocks the party.

See you there.

Oh and while I'm on the topic of addiction, I wanted to thank you for your comments on my post The T Word. Seriously, there aren't enough words to tell you how grateful I am for you. Thank you.

~COMMENTS ARE CLOSED ON THIS POST~

The T word

I had to take deep breaths and put my head down, waiting for it to pass. I could feel it coming, the panic. The need.

I thought about how I need to be stronger to handle this. I can't do this, I thought. Who am I doing this for? I think I'd be drinking if I wasn't worried about what people think. Ugh that's awful, I thought of me. You're so selfish, I said to me. You would drink even though you have these two boys who are being so good to you and this husband who patiently understands you. Really? Who are you doing this for if not for them and you and God? And you're not. You're doing this because you said you would and you don't even want this.

In that moment I hated me. And I put my head down and I was gasping for air and I just kept saying right out loud help me help me help me while pulling up to a liquor store kept popping into my head and so I would squeeze my eyes closed to try to make it go away.

Help me, please come help me, I said.

And then I thought about the rats. How someone told me about a study where the rats were given vodka in their water and they wouldn't touch it, they would rather die of thirst than drink it. And then how they were injected with this long 'T' word I can't remember, a thing that alcoholics have in their brains, and when that 'T' words was in their systems, they were given straight vodka in one bottle and plain water in another and then they drank the vodka until they died. Something outside of them made them alcoholics and then suddenly they wanted to drink and they could not stop.

Somehow this was a comfort to me. Not that the rats would drink themselves to death, that's sad, but the harsh reality of what I'm fighting hit me and I realized I'm not as weak as I feel. I'm doing the very best that I can. I'm a rat trying not to choose the wrong bottle even though everything in me is pulled to what I don't want to be.

This isn't a sob story, this is me telling you that there is no other explanation for my sobriety than a power greater than myself. And that's why today is a new and better day. I am here and I'm sober. I'm not drinking myself to death or to the loss of my loved ones and feelings. I'm sober today and I'm grateful. I really wish the 'T' word was not a part of my life. I would much rather be allergic to cheese than wine. But I'm not. This is my reality and somehow, some way, going through this and telling its story will help someone.

If you are that someone, I want you to know that you are worth every moment with my head down with deep breaths. You are.

Peace.

A picture story: Of Miles and 90

The next morning I woke up to a small finger tap-tap-tapping my arm.


Mommy, he said,

Is it Mommy and Miles Day again?

No sweetie, it's our whole family's day today, but that sure was fun, wasn't it?

Puppy dog eyes.

And it was. It was so good. We boarded a bus in the morning and bounced our way to St. Paul for a day at the Children's Museum with other families from Miles' preschool. We even got to see Uncle K for a while. When Miles ran to hug him I thought, I haven't seen him that excited in a really long time. He misses living by Uncle K.

We explored inside the museum...always really quickly, from thing to thing to thing. I tried hard to fight the Mommy Fears, the ones that rear their ugly head and make me think of injuries and kidnapping. Seriously. Motherhood is hard on a girl's brain, isn't it?



And then we explored outside.

We found this way cool little building sandwiched in an alley and despite the orange cones in front of it, we explored that too.

I know, I'm teaching my child to ignore orange cones for photo opportunities. Don't judge.


I want another Mommy and Miles Day. He is one of my favorite people.

Also, today I am 90 days sober. I don't tell you that so you'll praise me. I've got a LONG way to go on this journey, but I tell you that because I realized on Mommy and Miles Day that I wasn't in a hurry. I wasn't wishing to get back on the bus so I could get home to what I'd become so dependent on needing. I was just there.

I was just there.

The End.

~This post is a part of Tuesdays Unwrapped at Chatting at the Sky. Thank you Emily~

Comfort

"Remember, we all stumble, every one of us.
That's why it's a comfort to go hand-in-hand."

{Emily Kimbrough}

Motherhood has shown me how little I know about much of anything. It started right away. I thought I would know exactly what to do {pffft}, but I second-guessed everything. So much of the time, this unknowledge loomed over me, past and present and future. I knew instantly that I desperately wanted control of everything and I had control of nothing. It was terrifying. To fiercely want to protect while feeling so helpless.

Sometimes it feels like all I've done since we had our boys is stand in one place trying to figure things out. Thinking about how to do right by them or fix this or that while all the clashing thoughts bounce around my head and heart. Most often, by the time I work through the mess and come up the best possible response, the moment has passed. The child has moved on, feeling better or not, issue resolved or not. Life does its speedy thing and I'm the only one still standing there.

Motherhood, like sobriety, is humbling in the best possible way, because it forces me to reach out for help. It demands that I ask for peace and then for the healing of even the things that have already passed by while I stood there, numb and worrying.

I'm slowly learning to stand and worry less and to trust my gut more. I call it my heart-gut, and I may not know much, but I know God speaks there. I also know I will always be there for my boys. I'll be there, asking for help and giving it, moment by moment. And even when I stall and stand numb with life whizzing by, I have these things to wake me up to my need. They are sobriety and motherhood, so tangible it's as if they actually reach out a firm hand and give me a good shove in the right direction. In the direction of help.

These two labels on my life are definitely looming and so big and also gifts. I am a mother and I am an alcoholic. Those two words are reminders to surrender to today and to listen to my heart-gut. That is where I find comfort, and then give it to my boys.

Hurts so good

This really is a whole new life and it feels both wrong and right to write that.

It started with the quitting of the drinking and it just snowballs and snowballs and sometimes I feel like I'm just rolling downhill with it, completely out of control.

I'm gone five nights a week to learn how to get a handle on this sobriety thing and that's good and that's hard. It feels both wrong and right. It feels busy and overwhelming and yet I know it's right.

I'm reading little booklets given to me by my chemical dependency counselor with titles like, Intimacy and Understanding Emotions. Identity. Trust. Insecurity. When I'm reading, it all seems so obvious, but I've never really let the knowledge of how to live these things get from my head to my heart. It's overwhelming too, and you guessed it, it feels both wrong and right.

In her book Drinking: A Love Story, Caroline Knapp writes,

"When you quit drinking you stop waiting. You begin to let go of the wish, age-old and profound and essentially human, that someone will swoop down and do all that hard work, growing up, for you. You start living your own life."

That's exactly what's happening here. It's so impossible to describe and so I feel this rift with my friends and family. I feel somehow alien. Like I'm me, but not me, and I don't know exactly how to be. I make the same jokes and I listen to them and something is just so different. I'm different. Everything is different because everything looks different to me, and so I'm thinking and feeling differently. It feels so wrong and so right at the same time.

Not long after I quit drinking, maybe a week, I sat with one of my best friends at a coffee shop. She asked what this was like, how I was doing, and I just looked out the window. I said I just can't explain it, that everything is so different somehow and even though there's this new peace, it's just so much. I said that I feel like a new person and that scares me because starting over is hard.

She started to cry with me and she reached for my hand and said, we're going to be okay. And that was it, exactly what I needed to hear. I was scared that we wouldn't be...at all. That I had somehow irrevocably changed the we of our friendship by turning my half upside down and inside out in a way that maybe wouldn't fit the us of so many years.

I don't think I could walk around in life without knowing she's out there thinking of me and calling me friend. It's always been there, this comfort in a kindred replica of me, alive in her person, totally understanding who I am. A soul reflection, a heart monitor.

We're going to be okay.

My closest friends, the ones that will be with me and look at me and say we're going to be okay, are back in the place we just moved away from. They are still in my life through the phone, a call or text, an email or a short visit, but they feel really far away right now.

So I am grieving. I miss my friends and I miss a way of life that's gone. I am not alone but much of the time I feel alone here with sobriety. Shoving and pushing and pulling, moving all the things I thought I knew from my head to my heart.

All of it is working together, and as Caroline Knapp said, I'm starting to live my own life. I know this is really good, but this is really hard.

And it feels right.

~~~~~~

To my online friends who are on this sobriety road with me, please don't get all worried about the "alone in sobriety" thing. I'm working on that too. I'm going where I need to go to develop friendships with people in recovery. It just takes time, especially in a smallish town. So guess what? It makes me extra grateful for YOU.

When she knocks

A person in love with wine like me asked how I'm doing this,
this not drinking,
HOW?

How did you break up with her?

How do you hit 3 o'clock in your day and not have 5 o'clock to look forward to?
HOW?

The truth is, most of the time
I have no idea.
Yes, I talk about a new calm
peace
surrender
being present,

and that's all true.

But that peace and calm comes without getting to take the edge off
and that is hard work, yes.
My life, like anyone's life
is filled with angst and questions
and hurt and
yesterday was filled with
poop and barf
and whining
and disappointments
and sadness
and snotty noses
and we need groceries
and there's always someone climbing on me.

But I don't know. I guess sobriety teaches you that you have no other choice. I guess it's like anything else you have to do. You just do it.

You simply don't go to the liquor store. When thoughts, when wine knocks on the door, you ignore her while you plug your ears and say la la la...

~~~~~~~

I guess this much self-discovery and feeling while getting help forces you to take a look at your attitude, the very thing that makes or breaks you. That's easier for me to do when I'm not drinking. My mind and body are not so overcome with the obsession to make it to 5 o'clock, thoughts of whether or not there's enough in the house, or when I can get more. And my mind is less occupied by headaches and the guilt of not being able to hold back. There's room in there now to see other things, to make a decision to calm down and see beauty, more often.

And when I can't calm down and I'm obsessing about wine, all I can do is think,

Just for today
for this painful moment
I will make it without wine
because there's community and fellowship in recovery
so I have to make a call,
and there is comfort in a begging kind of prayer
and so I have to beg,
while I grieve my old back-stabbing friend wine.

I will allow myself to know that I want to sip wine while making dinner
so so so badly
but I can't
so I won't,
I'll just breathe
and sometimes pace
and get mad at it all
and find a quiet place or ask to leave
and I grieve
and surrender
because there's no other choice.

I'm new at this and I'm learning and I think knowing that I will learn things I never would have, I will overcome things I never could have, if I would have continued drinking...well, that's what brings the peace and fight in me to the surface. I would rather live free of the demons, my ways of thinking and not feeling that left me scared and lonely. They can't stay now, and that's what makes me want to dance. I'll deal with them one at a time and it will be painful and better than letting them sit on my shoulders, hissing.

Right now I can't be everything to everyone like I've always been,
until I'm spread so thin that I'm no one to anybody,
especially me.
Because we're all only one
and we need many
to be able to be anything to anybody at all. (say that three times fast.)

So I guess that's how I'm doing it. I'm struggling and finally asking for the help of many,
and I'm finding it's not such a bad idea.

In a safe place

"We do not remember days, we remember moments." -Cesare Pavese

I had some time alone at home and was spending it catching up. I hurried through Miles' room with an empty laundry basket bumping my leg as I walked. I bent to throw the dirty clothes from the floor to the basket and was hit with his smell like a bump to the head. It stunned me with its goodness and I was surprised to miss him even though he'd just left. I was there with his smell, one that's all boy and just this boy, my boy, all heavy with earth and fresh air and his hair. Oh, that hair that grows to a thick and careless mop and then transforms to a short faux hawk per his request because it looks cool, he says.

Either way is fine with me, I think, as long as it keeps its smell.

And then I'm hit with the next waft of him, something dirty and messy but mixing itself up to not stink. Like life.

Later, on his small bed, I hold the boy with his smells across my lap like a baby. With my back to the wall and not a sip of wine in me, I rock him back and forth and make up a story about a superhero boy just like him. No jumbled words and fuzzy mind make it messy, it's just Mama and Miles on the bed at night. His big blue eyes with brows like his Daddy look up at me with the intensity of listening for the part about a resuce, and with a lump in my throat I think, I want him to remember this moment.

Me, being a safe place.

~~~~~~~

Because of sobriety, more than ever before, life is about these moments and not days or weeks or months and especially not years. There is no other choice but moment by moment or the heaviness is crazy-making. Some of these moments are terribly hard, full of craving and regret, and they are merely survived and slowly felt, but no longer skipped or numbed. This way, they can be healed.

So now I'm standing around with laundry baskets and thinking, what would we do without these brilliant moments of respite, of stillness piled high with good things like birds or scents or humor? What would we do?

In the middle of this thing called recovery, while I'm facing thoughts that bring feelings that bring pain, these moments kick up joy and they are like a superhero story complete with rescuing. These moments are the reason I will look back on this part of my life and see that somehow, I was safe.